Toggle Full Screen Mode with a Keyboard Shortcut in Mac OS X Lion
Want to get the most out of Mac OS X Lion’s native Full Screen app mode? Assign a keyboard shortcut to toggle Full Screen mode. This works in all apps that support it natively, and the ones that don’t yet support it should work through Maximizer too.
Create a Keyboard Shortcut to Enter & Exit Full Screen App Mode
This obviously requires OS X 10.7:
- Open System Preferences and click on the”Keyboard” icon
- Select the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab and choose ‘Application Shortcuts’ from the list on the left
- Click on the + icon to add a new keyboard shortcut for all applications and type the following exactly:
- Now you need to assign it a keyboard shortcut, I chose Command+Escape because it serves no purpose in OS X Lion, but it’s the old keyboard shortcut for entering into Front Row
- Click “Add” and then click on the + icon again, this time typing:
- Choose the same keyboard shortcut as you chose before, in this case Command+Escape, and click onto “Add” again
- Close out System Preferences
Enter Full Screen
Exit Full Screen
Now pick an app that supports full screen mode natively, like Safari or Preview, and hit Command+Escape to enter or exit from the apps full screen mode, toggling it with ease. Why didn’t Apple set a key command for this in the first place? I don’t know.
A quick note: some apps through Maximizer don’t work that well, Chrome can still get stuck, and you may run into issues if you added Front Row to Lion yourself, but you can always choose another keyboard shortcut if Front Row starts launching instead. Be sure to update your apps often so you can gain native support for Lion features like this, and you won’t run into as many issues.
Thanks to Andy for sending us this tip from Red Sweater, they chose Command+Control+Return as their full screen shortcut, but I like Command+Escape.
Update: Some users report issues with Command+Escape so you may want to try Command+Control+F or another keyboard shortcut.
All native apps, Safari, Photo Booth, FaceTime, Mail, iTunes, etc, use CONTROL+COMMAND+F to enter and exit from full-screen. That would be my recommendation for setting a universal shortcut, to stay within Apple’s UX convention.
go to system-prefs->keyboard
enable show keyboard and character ….
and you will see the shortcuts in the menus
brs
henrik
but where are the manuals for lion ??
I followed all the steps and it looks exactly how it is in the picture for enter and exit but this doesnt work for me. I have a brand new mbp 13 with lion and I also have maximizer…any ideas?
Try another keyboard shortcut? Command+Escape might be assigned to something else for the app you are trying it in, but I have verified it works with many apps on a variety of shortcuts.
I guess command+esc didnt work but other shortcuts worked just fine
Didn’t work for me either. Tried command+esc – no go. Tried option+tab – no go. MBP 15″ i7 here.
Well, I just set option+f and it works.
Nope, it didn’t work with terminal. I think I’ll just leave this tip alone.
I tested it with Terminal and it works fine, you may need to relaunch Terminal for it to take effect
didn’t work with Command-esc
however option+f works.
Command-Esc works for me, but I will use Command+Control+F to stick with standard
nice tip
Command-esc didn’t work for me either.
option-f worked however, but I switched it to command-shift-f so that it would work with firefox. all native apps support this command also.
i used option+command+F to keep it native but FYI you have to enter the Enter Full Screen/Exit Full Screen with beginning caps in each word and spaces between or it doesn’t work
The escape key already does it on my iMac mid 2010 without any changes by me.
Sorry, I should have said escape exits full screen.
Thanks for this tip. I went with ByWord’s existing keystroke for entering and exiting full screen, Command-Return. That seems to work nicely.
[...] Full Screen mode (set a keyboard shortcut if you haven’t [...]
I tried all of them the only one that seems to work is option+f. Brand New MBP 13in
How do we enable the keyboard shortcuts for entering and exiting fullscreen, for Maximizer?
I’ve got iWeb working on full screen, but no idea why shortcut for full screen isn’t working.
Thanks a million
[...] Chrome browser has been updated to support two native OS X Lion features; full screen support and overlay scrollbars. These features have been available in the unstable developer channels but [...]
It seems to me that this only works on monitor #1… in order to go full screen from my second monitor I still have to click the expansion button in the top. Then, it slides over to monitor #1 as it expands, which looks cool, but isn’t exactly what I’m going for.
[...] while using a computer, and sometimes even the best of us need a bit of help to focus. Lion’s full screen mode can be helpful, but when that’s not enough or when you need access to other windows and apps, [...]
[...] haben wir ein systemweites Tastaturkürzel um den Vollbild-Modus zu aktivieren und zu deaktiveren. Hier gefunden. [...]
THANK YOU!!!!
Command + control + f worked for me but Command + Escape did not. MacBook Pro 13″ new in Jan 2012.
Command-Control-Return worked fine for me. Thanks for the tip – clicking that icon to do this is time-consuming and, well, requires the mouse.
Control + Escape also works on MacBook Pro 2012.